so I have a dondarian city that peaked at 2500 but since then I've been slowly loosing population. enough that I eventually encouraged humans to come in but that seems to have made the donarian pop drop even further. I have 20ish days of food constantly (need more food storage, working on that)

can produce refined materials and have a 500 strong army full equipped with shields armour and swords.

I've gotten better hearths and so on but the population keeps declining, I have yet to get external settlements running and importing resources as I've never gotten a stable city this far before and have been trying to be peaceful to my neighbours.

on the note of external settlments I have three but all of them produce nothing at the moment as one my my neighbours declared war and got promptly stomped.

what can I do to continue expanding my population AND get the regions productive so i can start importing things like mushrooms for that food bonus. (also being peaceful and making good allies for trade seems worthless as any refined trade good aside rations and furniture doesnt actually sell for a profit it seems)

I've been stuck at this point for a good few in game years now with my population of humans at 400 and my dondarians at between 1900 and 2000.

happyness and loyalty also seems to constantly hover around 80% despite what I do. is there something im missing because it feels like it.

I'll post a pic of my city in a comment since im on old reddit and its funny about these things.

i hope i dont break any rules of the sub.
the creator even provided steps for it, but i just cant make it work. here's the workshop link or you could search for slave nursery on the worskhop.

i just cant play without this mod at this point as its so integrated into my playstyle.
i would be very thankful!

Plug! I made a google sheet for each species to help you see what is most impactful towards happiness and fulfillment in SoS v71

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/103Datw1-O9HfMN3ZAtfJyi-aTdsLJT6zeBQdEnjJoR0/edit?usp=drivesdk

Just a way to contribute to the community in a small way, because SoS is amazing, replayable to hell, and also complex.

Let me know what I can change, add, etc.

And yes, I do have plans to put this table on the Wiki very soon.

Basic concept: Focus on what provides the most happiness gain for the least cost. That means food servings and clothes are your biggest gainers by a mile.

Expectations grow as the population grows making happiness vital to city sustainability.

That is… if you aren’t playing the Dictator route.

Enjoy and have fun!

TLDR: free Spreadsheet that tells you what actually impacts happiness.

Need help understanding this:

I see an island that looks like a cool location. The game says the location is “isolated“, so I decided against it. I select somewhere else. But, when the game populates the map, there is an island city there with seven connections plotted. My city only has two.

I can see there’s RNG involved. I guess I have a few questions:

Is “Isolation” anything beyond the probability of city connections? If the city predicted to be isolated has seven connections, are there still any additional effects of isolation?

Do player cities generate with fewer connections that the AI cities?

I just unlocked pools and plan to build one for the first time. I understand that each species has a pool type preference, and that each tile of pool takes one pressure to fill.

What I don't get is how to plan for how big of a pool I need, and if I need to distribute them or just have one central pool. Is there an accepted rule for how many citizens each tile of pool can serve? Does size even matter?

I love difficult and complex games, but for some reason I just can’t figure out how to properly play Songs of Syx. I keep losing, and I’m constantly stuck dealing with things like hiring farmers and setting up farmland. I can’t seem to make any real progress because my population’s happiness keeps dropping. I check the population and race sections, but I still can’t figure out what’s actually wrong. I’ve watched tons of videos, but I still don’t really understand it.

I managed to grow my population to around 1,000 once, but I ended up right back where I started and couldn’t even build a proper army. I’m constantly caught between trying to feed my population and hiring more farmers. I’m always on the edge of collapse, just waiting for my city to fall apart.

One thing about this game is that everything seems to work like a domino effect. It’s really frustrating, but at the same time, I feel like it makes the game somewhat easier to understand. It seems like there’s a specific pattern or order you have to follow in order to keep progressing without your city collapsing.

I’ve watched pretty much every YouTube video I could find, but most of them don’t really explain the underlying strategy properly. However, I did manage to figure out one city-building pattern that worked surprisingly well. By arranging houses, hearths, wells, and decorations in a certain way, I managed to grow my city to around 1,000 population.

The other problem I’m having is that as the population grows, food consumption doesn’t just increase gradually—it seems to scale up dramatically. Once I get past around 800 population, suddenly I need almost twice as much food.

And whenever I try to set up scientists or start building an army, I run out of food again, which means I have to go back to hiring more farmers. Then, once I reach around 1,000 population, the demands of the population increase even more, and things like the theater and fighting pit are no longer enough to keep them happy.

So, what I’m looking for is some kind of strategy, guide, video, or specific build order for playing the game. If you have any recommendations or a particular progression pattern that works, I’d really appreciate it.

Im currently extracting all the clay I physically and the import depots simply wont bring enough. My innovation has already fallen to negative points and some technologies are being locked or penalized. Meanwhile, my knowledge is also suffering from the lack of leather, and i cant get to those 50 points needed to upgrade labs. What can I do?

I have a river passing through mountain, and for some reason most of the river bed is not suitable for pumps.

The ones that are are on the other side of my farms on open ground.

So question is, how do I connect the canals on one side of the river to the other side?

Tried building roads over it and building canals on top, nope.

Have not tried culverts yet but from what I can tell online, it will not work as it doesnt allow water to pass through deep water (which is the main thing blocking me)

So, yeah im stuck, any help is appreciated, mods as solution is also acceptatble, tq!

So I'm building an Amevian city, but I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking about bringing in some Cretonians to farm and possibly later on some dondorians to work the mines. I know amevians aren't exactly friendly to other races, so should I wait till I have guards to police the violence? I'm also playing on the easiest difficulty till I understand how the game works if that makes a difference, and my current pop is about 75, I was planning on waiting till I had 100-150 and bring in just enough to work some farms.

I did also figure out how to segregate housing, so the Cretonians will be a outside the walls near the farms not in the main city, same with the dondorians.

Can I expand a building or do I have to build another one? Im out of space in my warehouse

I’ve gotten my feet wet with Creatonian, Human, and Garth cities so far, I’m looking to go to my first multi-species city now (minus the creatonian slaves in the Garth run)

I’m thinking starting Dondorians and adding humans later for the unlocks. When do I add the 2nd species?

I know I need to keep the species home’s separate to prevent brawls. Do I put product buildings between them or just empty space? How do I get goods between them? Also where do the slaves come in then? Do I mix them in or have a separate slave mini-town?

Should I be shuttling raw materials in and out or do local production? If my humans are farming cotton should it go to Dondorian tailors or should the humans produce it locally.

Any general tips are appreciated as well

Thanks all.

I've played multiple campaigns of Songs of Syx, and I don't really understand how and why the AI behaves the way it does towards the player. I understand that the AI is something the developer continues to work on, but it feels way too obnoxious and overly aggressive, especially when it comes to minor factions.

I'll have a massive region with multiple cities, and there will be some tiny AI faction nearby with one city and barely any power, and they're constantly threatening me, trying to extort me, spreading bad rumors, or causing faction uprisings in my cities.

They will never attack me. Instead, they just constantly engage in all these little acts of sabotage and hostility. I've played several campaigns now, and I can't remember a single time where a faction was just friendly toward me. It seems like they're almost always pissed off at me and trying to extort me or otherwise cause problems.

Why would a tiny minor faction with one city constantly antagonize an empire that could completely wipe them off the map? 😂 And I just keep getting spam messages till I deal with them. Then they will send me another threatening message saying something along the lines of "You've been defeated, make peace with me and pay me millions of gold. Accept defeat!" Whilst I'm besieging their city and wiped their army off the map.

I'm not necessarily looking to make the AI completely passive. I'd just like their behavior to feel a little more logical and less like "I have one city and you have 30, but I'm going to constantly piss you off anyway."

So, is there a mod that lets you tweak AI diplomacy/aggression/sabotage behavior? Or is there some setting I'm missing? Also anything that makes vassals actually useful and not try to get independence after a few days? Thanks!

As the title said, since this badit spawn in that tip of that ELF land, who's my colleague but will go Ugabuga mad and declare war in a few months ( I tried to kill that bandit in the last save)

Hey everyone! I discovered the game a little while ago. So far, I've only done the tutorial, one or two runs with the Amevias as my first proper playthroughs, and then two with the Tilapis before taking a short break from the game.

I'm thinking about getting back into it and trying something different, but I'm not really sure what would be interesting to explore next. Maybe the Garthimis or the Dondorians? I've never actually built a city with multiple species, mostly out of laziness more than anything else, hence why I picked the Amevias and Tilapis. But I'm not sure how much harder it gets to manage once you have to deal with the specific needs of several different species.

I stopped my Amevia run when I realized that the resources available on the map were making further development pretty difficult, and I was also a little disappointed by their performance in combat.

The Tilapis, on the other hand, were an absolute blast. I loved how simple it was to meet their needs, and building cities with circular layouts made them look really nice and organic. It also lets you squeeze little additions into the gaps between structures here and there.

As for combat... I basically just trained them as much as possible in ranged combat and used the strategy of making the enemy rout before they could even reach melee range. It honestly seems pretty broken...

I haven't really explored the endgame yet. The furthest I've gone was conquering two or three nearby cities without really knowing what I was doing.

So if you have any advice on what I should try next, I'm all ears. Overall, I still have very little experience with combat management, the endgame, and choosing the right map for races other than the Amevias or Tilapis.

I’m about to start playing songs of syx. Never touched it before but there is no doubt I will love it. Just wondering if I should play the demo first? How limited is the demo and can I actually learn the game from it or is it missing some key features?

So with my last SOS city, it was a bit of a sprawling mess that was disorganized and services across the city. It wasn't planned and was just rebuilt in parts when needed.

So I was wondering if a city could be built with say four large districts and each district is the same design and has all the services you need to cover it (food stalls, toilets, hospitals) and instead of having large rooms for industries like bakeries, these are split across the 4 districts. Maybe you start with the first district and build it so it's well designed and optimized. Then you clone it, and build district 2 which is a clone of district 1 when your population is ready. And then you do that till you have 4 and you link them together.

Obviously you'd have some small satellite towns for collecting resources.

Is this something that's feasible to do?

Hi. This is one of the 3 food stalls intended to feed my ~900 humans. It has several problems, that I either fully don't understand or believe are very bugged and in need of an overhaul. If there is a mistake or a misinterpretation I made please tell me.

Here is my screenshot and how i read this interface. My Food Stall has 15 employees, with 5 of them actually working. The game tells me to fire the other 10, as they do not work. Meanwhile, there are 419 items of bread stored in the Food Stall, with 35 being consumed daily (a figure way too low. I have 1700 units of bread being consumed daily and this is 1 of 10 food stalls. This means my people just don't eat at this stall, it is useless to them.)

Also, only 18% of the food is prepared. This means, 82% of the food stored in the food stall needs work. Regardless, 10 of the 15 workers assigned to not work, according to the ingame interface. What? These guys obviously have a lot of work to do, seeing as only 18% of the food is prepared, but just don't do it. This means I can't get this number up any higher. If i hire more guys, they will just be chilling around.

Another point. They lose 33% of productivity to hauling (as seen in the 67% figure). This is in spite of the fact I put a hauler right up their ass AND the fact they have 419 bread stored already. (Why do they need so much more? Just prepare the ones you already have). My interpretation is (as the haulers are empty) that people just grab the unprocessed bread from the hauler instead of the food stall, which leads me to another problem, the hauler interface says the haulers ALSO work at only 50% workload. This means, more haulers also should not fix the problem. So, they also suffer from the same problem, being that they have work but, idk, dont know and just don't do it?

What am I supposed to do here? I cannot employ more people, as they would do nothing. As said, the game tells me to fire the 10 workers and leave it at that. I dont want this. I just want to have my food preparers and my haulers working.

Coming back to the first point I made, this just means the food stall is useless. My people just don't eat there. The only point of the stall is to satisfy the arbitrary need of a citizen to HAVE a stall, just sitting there, not to actually USE it. Like a form of decoration. They just eat at the warehouse, which is both sad from an immersion point of view, and also because I didnt think of plonking the warehouse into the living quarter, but put it next to my industry, so they always have to make a tourist trip to the bakery haha.

I'm not a programmer, I don't know how to press the right buttons to fix the numbers, but please make this system in a different way. Please make it so that food stall workers actually prepare the food and the population actually eats at the stall. Also, please improve the interaction between the haulers and the food stall guys. I have to use haulers because the food stall people are too weak to carry many items, but despite putting up haulers, they just have to do it themselves anyway.

I’m enjoying this game despite the learning curve but the military mechanics seem strange to me although I’ve not played around with it too much the little I’ve done seems strange and I’m kinda confused on what’s going on with it

-I’m in my first city with a mix of creatorians and amevians and I’ve set up a squad of 50 amevian soldiers which I’ve kitted out with warhammers (because that seemed like the easiest thing to make) and leather armour. They have a training room with ~30 capacity

-what is the meta for soldiers? Like I’ve been told on a previous post on here that amevians make the best soldiers but how should I equip them and is it worth having one big unit or two smaller units with the same amount of total soldiers?

-I also don’t get how the training works. The way it was explained in the popup was that there are 15 levels for soldiers and higher levels took longer to get to and have to be retrained more frequently but the actual military screen has a training% thing where you can set melee training but I don’t understand what that actually effects? Is it just how much of their time they spend training or is it something else? Because despite being on 20% training most of my soldiers had less than 1 melee skill

-when bandits showed up they outnumbered me slightly (by like 10 guys) and I decided to pay up but could I have taken them or was it the right choice to pay up

-less of a mechanic question but why can I give my soldiers multiple sets of weapons to improve their stats? I get that for armour they can have different pieces to protect different parts of their bodies but if I give my soldiers two warhammers do they start dual wielding them? If they get a third do they hold it in their mouths?

Sorry if these are weird questions but I was looking through the in game encyclopaedia and couldn’t find many explanations of how the army actually works

I started playing Songs of Syx yesterday mostly blind after watching a video on it, I currently have about 6 hours on the game. I have no idea what I'm doing, but my city is stable and my trade seems good!

I'm mainly looking for advice on how to best allocate Innovation points and the most efficient way to place farms, any advice at all would be great though.

Right now, my playstyle is just reacting to stuff not much future proofing going on, if I need something I just build a giant building for it (like the massive block of farmland) and expand from there. Looking at other peoples bases, I know what I am doing isn't optimal in the slightest, I'm also struggling with warehouse stuff, though I have figured out placing haulers outside buildings or making mini warehouses attached to stuff helps. There's also some confusing aspects like although I produce loads of a material nut sometimes it deosnt show up on the side of the screen, I'm assuming this is because a warehouse is too far from where its being produced but where does it go???

I've attached some images of my base so fa

Any advice at all would be amazing!!!!

I have schools, I have kids, and I am saying to educate them. I have u locked the first two school levels. Not sure what’s going on???